Not one showed the least flaw in personal neatness.  Moreover, the tents which these cadets had just quitted were in absolute order and wholly clean.  At West Point no excuse whatever is accepted for untidiness of person or quarters.

With military snap and briskness the battalion was formed.  Then at brisk command, the battalion turned to the left in column of fours, marching down the hot, sun-blazed road to cadet mess.

Despite the heat and the hard work of the forenoon—–­these cadets had been up, as they we every day in summer, since five in the morning—–­spirits ran high at the midday meal, and chaffing talk and laughter ran from table to table.

The meal over, the battalion marched back to camp.  There were a few minutes yet before the afternoon drills.  A few minutes of leisure?  Yes, if such an easy act as dressing in uniform appropriate to the coming drill, may be termed leisure.

“Drills are going to be called off, I reckon,” murmured Greg, poking his head outside the khaki colored tent after he had put himself in readiness.

“What’s up?” demanded Anstey, lacing a legging.

“The sky is about the color of ink over old Crow’s Nest,” reported Greg.

Just then there came a vivid flash of lightning, followed, in a few seconds, by a deep, echoing roll of thunder.  The summer storms along this part of the Hudson River sometimes come almost out of the clear sky.

“I’m always thankful for even the smallest favors,” muttered Anstey, with a yawn.

“We’ll have to make up this drill some other day, when it’s hotter,” Dick observed, but he nevertheless dropped on to a campstool with a grunt of relief.

Yes; each of these three cadets could now have a campstool of his own in quarters, for Prescott, Holmes and Anstey were all yearlings.

And a yearling is “some one” in the cadet corps.  For the first few days after his release from the plebe class the yearling is quite likely to feel that he is nearly “the whole thing.”  By degrees, however, the yearling in summer encampment discovers that there is a first class of much older cadets above him.

There are no second classmen in summer encampment, until just before the time to break camp and return to barracks for the following academic year.  Members of the new second class—–­men who have successfully passed through the first two years of life at the United States Military Academy—–­are allowed two months and a half of summer furlough, during which time they return to their homes.

Readers of the foregoing volume in this series, "Dick Prescott’s First Year at West Point", are already familiar with the ordeals, the hard work, the sorrows and the few pleasures, indeed, of plebe life at West Point.